News

From J.J. Abrams to readers, mystery wrapped in romance

Multimedia project: 'S.' comes with all sorts of surprises tucked within its pages, not the least of which is a whole other story ‘handwritten’ around the margins of the printed text.

Introducing that physical, analogue thing called a ‘book’, created by that very visual, digital-techie called J.J. Abrams.

THE first clue came in the form of an evocative trailer posted on YouTube late last year.

In a lyrical black and white clip, a mysterious figure stumbled along a shadowy coastline, water lapping the sand at his feet. A voice read elliptical prose about a circuitous journey at sea, as the imagery built to an unsettling final shot: a man with his lips sewn together staring at the camera with knowing, unforgiving eyes.

The effect was a bit like watching a Calvin Klein couture ad directed by the Marquis de Sade.

The teaser turned out to be a clever bit of online marketing for the novel S., which was released late last year amidst an aura of mystery. Created by the man who might be Hollywood’s chief conspiratorial mind, J.J. Abrams, and written by Doug Dorst, the cryptically entitled S. tells the story of two college students searching for the truth about an enigmatic author, V.M. Straka, a character who’s accused of nearly as many crimes as the French sadist.

The amateur sleuths correspond with each other in the margins of a library copy of Straka’s last published work, Ship Of Theseus, leaving a trail of postcards, newspaper articles, maps and other archival materials tucked into the pages to guide one another, and the reader, through their quest to learn the truth about the late, prolific recluse.

He did the writing: Novelist Doug Dorst had the difficult task of putting Abrams’ wildly creative ideas into words.

“The idea here was to create an object through which a relationship was initiated and cultivated and a romance blossomed,” Abrams said in a recent interview.

Abrams’ passion for arcane mysteries has fuelled much of his creative output in Hollywood. The metaphysically knotty TV drama Lost unfolded like a philosophical puzzle, and his earlier series, Alias, was just as preoccupied with conspiracy and misdirection. His movie projects, too, have been shrouded in secrecy – Abrams disclosed few details about the plot of his coming-of-age adventure/alien-invasion thriller Super 8 prior to its release, and last year’s Star Trek Into Darkness identified Benedict Cumberbatch by an alias so that audiences wouldn’t realise the actor had been cast as the famously wrathful Khan.

Abrams hit upon the idea of S. after discovering a novel that had been left behind by another traveller, and drew inspiration from the murder mysteries of British author Dennis Wheatley (1897-1977), who included dossiers of evidence in his books.

“There was one I remember called Who Killed Robert Prentice?” Abrams says. “It had a torn up photograph in these little wax paper envelopes. As a child, I remember seeing those. That always stayed with me, that idea of getting a book, a packet, that was not just like any other book.”

Opening S. does feel like uncovering a literary artifact. The book comes in a black case embossed with the gothic capital letter; inside is that copy of Ship Of Theseus with the messages between grad student Eric and college senior Jen handwritten in the margins of the novel, which centres on a man who boards a strange ship and heads out on a perilous journey.

He doesn't do straightforward: Trust J.J. Abrams, Hollywood’s chief conspiratorial mind, to create a novel that many don’t know what to make of.

“We knew from the beginning that the inner novel would have to stand on its own as a work of literature that people are still talking about decades later,” says novelist Dorst. “After we’d committed to it, it did occur to me what I’d gotten myself into. It was about following the story through and taking as many idiosyncratic turns as presented themselves, because I was trying to write as this other writer who is known for being an idiosyncratic writer.”

Dorst already had earned acclaimed for his 2009 debut, Alive In Necropolis, a dark, California-set satire about a police officer struggling to cope in a town where the living and the dead co-exist, not always harmoniously. He also wrote a well-received follow-up collection of short stories entitled The Surf Guru, and his work has been featured in McSweeney’s, the American literary magazine renowned for its innovative approach to design.

After Abrams contacted him to share the idea for S. Dorst quickly signed on.

“The formal conceit of the novel, in which you have the novel unfolding in the margins of another novel, that seemed interesting to me,” Dorst says. “One of my favourite things to do in writing is to find different angles with which to tell a story – being open to the idea that there are stories that might be served best by a really odd narrative approach.”

Despite that early cinematic teaser trailer, Abrams insists he has no plan to adapt the book for the screen. “The whole point of this project was to create this novel,” Abrams says. “This is a story about how a book is used as a means of communication and sort of a catalyst for a great investigation that is also a love affair. It is sort of a celebration of ‘the book,’ that physical, analogue thing.” – Los Angeles Times/McClatchy-Tribune Information Services